Found this afternoon

Whilst finishing off cutting the hedge this afternoon I came across this blackbird's nest, that must have been adandoned some time ago - whether by default or by the death of the blackbird I don't know. Anyway, I took it from the hedge to show the chidren and made a few pictures, including the one below. Remarkably, the eggs were intact, but two got cracked in the move. As you can imagine the smell was something strong, but still a nice find.

Mike.

How did the children respond to the sight and the smell? Looks like a nice find for a nature talk - good job Dad!

Marshall

Hi,

Your DoF is well managed, the intact egg has a real strong presence.
Colors of the eggs are wonderfull, whereas entire scene is quite dramatic as it evokes death and hard reality.

Marshall, the girls loved it and didn't seem to notice the smell as much as my wife!

Cedric, thanks for your comments. You have described what I hoped to evoke, which makes it a success(!) for me.

The colours were wonderful, and I used DXo to process the raw file as I really like it's colour palette - in fact I'm heading back towards using it for a lot more work even though it doesn't seem to like working on large numbers of big files at once.


Incidentally, I printed this and the B&W film images on some hahnemuhle Baryta from a test pack, and am completely sold on the paper. Shame it costs more than Ilford GFS.

Mike

Mike, I agree with what Cedric said. pigeons tend to make hatch their young ones on some
window sills in my house to avoid the cats. however the young ones generally fall to their death
as soon as they move out of the nest ( 2nd floor ). i have a couple of images of the young ones
on the sill and on the floor. very distressing. but that is life and it really is the strong that survive
and come back to the sill to begin the circle of life ( and death ) again.

Lovely capture.